Robert Baden-Powell's sexual orientation
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While early works on the life of the founder of Scouting, works commissioned or written by those close to the Baden-Powells or by insiders to the Scouting movement, such as 27 years with Baden-Powell or The Chief: The life story of Robert Baden-Powell, both by Eileen Kirkpatrick Wade, mentioned nothing on this subject, modern authors, upon examining Baden-Powell's life and papers from the perspective of late-twentieth century understanding of sexuality, have explained his life-long work with boys as motivated by a strong erotic attraction to masculine beauty, principally in the form of young males. Among these historians are Tim Jeal, the author of Baden-Powell, a widely praised biography which takes a compassionate view of a man he considers to have lived a life of repressed homosexuality, and Michael Rosenthal of Columbia University, in his The character factory: Baden-Powell and the origins of the Boy Scout movement. As a result of his investigations, Jeal is persuaded that "The available evidence points inexorably to the conclusion that Baden-Powell was a repressed homosexual." Gender studies scholar Geoffrey Bateman sums up current scholarship, also stating that "Baden-Powell was probably a homosexual. Certainly, most of his life was spent in same-sex environments and his deepest emotional commitment was with another man."[1]
Other historians have commented less favorably on Baden-Powell's presumed attractions, such as Kenneth Morgan of Oxford who refers to Baden-Powell's "probable pederasty" as a character defect covered up by the media of his time.[2] Nonetheless, despite his alleged attraction to youths, Baden-Powell is thought to always have remained chaste with his scouts, and he did not tolerate Scoutmasters who indulged in sexual 'escapades' with their charges.[3]
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[edit] Alleged erotic influences in his work
Two modern biographers of Baden-Powell, Michael Rosenthal of Columbia University and Tim Jeal, consider him to have been a repressed homosexual. Tim Jeal's work, researched over five years, was published by Yale University Press and well-reviewed by the New York Times[4] and other publications.[5] As James Casada writes in his review for Library Journal, it is "a balanced, definitive assessment which so far transcends previous treatments as to make them almost meaningless."[6]
For much of his life, Baden-Powell's closest friend was Kenneth McLaren, a boyish looking British Army officer whom Baden-Powell had grown fond of when they first served together in India. Baden-Powell called McLaren his "best friend in the world," and affectionately nicknamed him "the Boy."[7] They remained close until McLaren chose to marry — against Baden-Powell's advice — a woman below his station. Their friendship was the cause of intense jealousy on the part of Baden-Powell's wife.[8]
Along with many other pieces of evidence for his contention, Jeal mentions as illustrative an episode which occurred in November 1919. While on a visit to Charterhouse, his old public school, he stayed with an old friend, A. H. Tod, a bachelor teacher and housemaster who had taken large numbers of nude photographs of his pupils as part of a photographic record of public school life. Baden-Powell's diary entry about his stay reads: "Stayed with Tod. Tod's photos of naked boys and trees. Excellent." In a subsequent communication to Tod regarding starting up a Scout troop at the school, Baden-Powell mentions his impending return visit and adds: "Possibly I might get a further look at those wonderful photographs of yours."[9]
Tod's pictures survived until the 1960s, when they were destroyed reportedly in order to "protect Tod's reputation."[10] According to R. Jenkyns, the album contained nude boys in poses which were in his opinion "contrived and artificial."[11] Neither Tod nor Powell's relations are suspected of being anything but chaste, and the pictures were in keeping with the contemporary tradition of male homoerotic art exemplified by Henry Scott Tuke's paintings, Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden's photography, and others.
Jeal also mentions that Baden-Powell "…consistently praised the male body when naked and denigrated the female. At Gilwell Park, the Scouts' camping ground in Epping Forest, he always enjoyed watching the boys swimming naked, and would sometimes chat with them after they had just 'stripped off.'"[12]
Despite his stated appreciation for the beauty of males Baden-Powell is not known to have acted on his suspected attraction with any of the boys, nor did he tolerate scoutmasters who indulged in sexual escapades with their charges, recommending flogging for such offenses.[13] Indeed, he was adamant about the need to restrain the sexual impulse, especially in his communications with boys. He incorporated a graphic prohibition against masturbation in early scouting manuals (so graphic that Cox, his printer, refused to run the presses till the mention was watered down), and into his eighties carried on correspondences with individual Scouts exhorting them to control their urge for "self-abuse." He subscribed to the commonly held turn-of-the-century opinion that the practice led to disease, madness and sexual impotence. His views were not shared by all. Dr. F. W. W. Griffin, editor of The Scouter, wrote in 1930 in a book for Rover Scouts that the temptation to masturbate was "a quite natural stage of development" and steered scouts to a text by H. Havelock Ellis that held that "the effort to achieve complete abstinence was a very serious error."[14]
Baden-Powell regarded the body as the best example of the beauty of nature, and with that of God, the creator: "A clean young man in his prime of health and strength is the finest creature God has made in the world." This is conformal with a lot of his other writing in which he stressed the important of being healthy and strong. As an example he told about some Swazi chiefs with whom he met some gymnastic instructors. The chiefs were not fully satisfied until they had had the men stripped and had examined themselves their muscular development. This can be compared with the masculine culture for instance of weightlifters. In contrary, Baden-Powell never wrote or made drawings (he was a good amateur-artist) about males in a sense which can be regarded as erotic.[15]
[edit] On his relationships with women
Baden-Powell often expressed disfavor towards female bodies, generally in contrast to his appreciation for male ones, which he admired and found "clean". At age fifty-five, he married twenty-three-year-old Olave St Clair Soames.
Their relationship has been described as holding hints of masculine attraction as well, as she altered her appearance to suit him. She flattened her breasts[16], cut her hair, and wore her scout-like Guide uniform. However, as Olave was the World Chief Guide, wearing her uniform to Guiding functions would have been appropriate.
In short order after his marriage Baden-Powell began to suffer from agonizing headaches. Two years after the birth of their third child he began sleeping apart from his wife, on a balcony. From that date his headaches left him, a relief thought to spring from "the end of his reproductive duties and his departure to a separate bedroom."[17]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Geoffrey W. Bateman, in Baden-Powell biography in glbtq [1]
- ^ Morgan, K.O. "The Boer War and the Media (1899–1902)." Twentieth Century British History 13 (2002), pp. 1-16.
- ^ Jeal 1989, p. unknown
- ^ The New York Times.
- ^ Cushman, Joseph D. Review of The Boy-Man: the life of Lord Baden-Powell, by Tim Jeal. Sewanee Review 100 (Winter 1992). [2]
- ^ Casada, James. Review of The Boy-Man: the life of Lord Baden-Powell, Library Journal 115, Mar. 1990, p. 98. Quoted on Amazon USA.
- ^ Jeal, p. 74.
- ^ Jeal, op.cit. passim
- ^ Jeal, pp. 93.
- ^ Jeal, p. 93; p. 606, n. 50.
- ^ Jeal, p. 93.
- ^ Jeal, pp. 92.
- ^ Jeal, p. 510.
- ^ Jeal, pp.93–94.
- ^ Jeal, p.83.
- ^ Geoffrey W. Bateman, in Baden-Powell biography in glbtq; "She altered her appearance to suit him, flattening her breasts and shearing her hair. As Jeal remarks, 'With every hint of sex removed from a relationship he could get on reasonably well with women.'"[3]
- ^ Jeal, op.cit. p.101
[edit] References
- Jeal, Tim (1989). Baden-Powell. Hutchinson.
- Rosenthal, Michael. The character factory: Baden-Powell and the origins of the Boy Scout movement.
